


Babycakes

by misscai



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Babies, Children, Drama, F/M, Family Drama, Fatherhood, Introspection, Mentions of Sex, mentions of vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 14:40:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscai/pseuds/misscai
Summary: "But the moment he looked up at the aisle label, Jack whirled the cart around so fast that the wheels skidded against the tiles, banging into the endcap. The mush-filled jars on the shelf clinked together at the jostling. Jack was a coward. No grown man should be this affected by a four-letter word."Jack Rees is - was - ready to be a parent. His wife, Georgia? Not so much.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character





	Babycakes

Jack was in charge of groceries now. He made the weekly run to the store first thing on Sunday morning, when he could be one of the few cars in the lot. Everyone else around town either slept or went to church, leaving Jack alone among the fresh fruits and canned goods.

In one hand he held tight to a scrap of pink paper with a cartoon panda bear in the corner. It looked deceptively cute; the text beside it said, in lovely curlicues, ‘shit we need’. Georgia had purchased them on a whim during one of her online shopping escapades, eagerly slapping the magnetized back of the pad against the refrigerator the moment the package arrived. Jack’s precise handwriting covered the page, his ‘grapes’ and ‘barbeque sauce’ interspersed with ‘lemon cake’ and ‘fist-sized marshmallows’ in Georgia’s wild scrawl. He would ignore those requests as he always did. She would rot all of her teeth out if not for him.

He went up and down every aisle, filling the cart with the necessities for two people. Half the amount of asparagus, since Georgia had decided that she hated the way the stalks crunched; double the amount of Pillsbury pre-made cookies, since Jack had made them his comfort food in the recent months. Corn, only ever on the cob. Full-sized carrots that Georgia would complain about having to chop up. None of those little brown mushrooms that he normally liked atop his steaks. No Goldfish. No Cheerios. No applesauce.

When he came upon one aisle in particular—as he had for the past two and a half months—Jack gritted his teeth. This was the day that he would do it. Just four steps and he would be in the aisle. He turned the cart and leaned his elbows against the handles. He would do it. He would.

But the moment he looked up at the aisle label, Jack whirled the cart around so fast that the wheels skidded against the tiles, banging into the endcap. The mush-filled jars on the shelf clinked together at the jostling. Jack was a coward. No grown man should be this affected by a four-letter word.

.

Georgia met him with a kiss at the door the instant she heard the hum of the car engine turn off, slipping past him to grab a load of bags from the trunk. Jack set his bags down on the kitchen island, rubbing at the back of his neck as he headed for the bedroom to kick off his shoes. The bed was unmade as usual, pillows strewn around the floor and Georgia’s R2-D2 nightshirt flung across the headboard. At first Jack had begged for her to at least flip the comforter back into place, but after four years of marriage, he had accepted that her habits wouldn’t be changed. He could still conjure up the memory of her expression the first time he’d joked about her messiness: her brows lifted, a dimple at the corner of her eye as she grinned up at him, the way she’d trailed a finger along the waistband of his jeans as she asked _why make the bed when we’re just going to wreck it later?_ That day, ‘later’ hadn’t even been five minutes.

“Where’s the cake?” Jack rolled his eyes and moved back into the kitchen to help Georgia unload. She never remembered to put away the frozen foods first.

“You don’t need any more cake, Gee,” he said as he tossed a bag of pizza rolls into the freezer. “Especially not lemon cake.” The last time they’d bought it, Georgia had eaten half in one sitting and spent the entire night vomiting up citrusy icing. She’d eaten the rest the next day. Impulse control wasn’t her strongest suit.

“It’s summer, Jacky,” she insisted, reaching up on her tip-toes to put the bananas in the fruit basket. One she kept for herself, leaning against the cabinet and peeling it carefully. “One must have lemon cake in the summer. Ask Marie Antoinette.”

“You know she never said that.” He unpacked almond meal and two types of sugar.

“Yeah, but she said ‘let them eat cake.’ You shouldn’t disobey a queen. It’s poor manners.” He didn’t correct her a second time. Georgia hopped up on the countertop, taking a bite of banana. “Plus, she could behead you.”

“I don’t think she’ll be beheading anyone from the grave.” When he leaned past her to grab and refill the salt shaker, Georgia pressed her half-eaten banana against his neck.

“I could do it in her honor,” she said with a grin. Jack pushed her hand away, grimacing at the stickiness left on his skin. Georgia pouted. “Spoilsport.”  
“What do you want for lunch?”

“Cake,” she muttered under her breath. Jack pretended not to hear her, and when she didn’t get a chuckle or a sarcastic retort, she sighed and slid off the counter to finish unpacking. “I’ll just make a sandwich later. I’ve got work to do.” Jack nodded, but with Georgia’s back turned to him, she didn’t see.

.

Back when they were dating, and even in the first months of their marriage, Jack had indulged Georgia’s every whim. She was nearly finished studying graphic design and animation in college when they’d met at the bar that he had scraped together all his savings to purchase. Then, it was less of a bar and more of a bankrupted hole-in-the-wall diner, but Jack and a few of his college buddies tore the place to pieces in order to build it back up again. Georgia stumbled into the bar accidentally, looking for the first place with a roof after being caught in a thunderstorm with no jacket to shield her precious laptop. The only alcohol in the building was a twelve-pack of beers from the convenience store down the road, but Jack still offered one to her when she asked.

That became their habit: Georgia spoke, and Jack complied. She always got her way, to the point where Jack’s friends made little whip noises behind his back whenever they were around. It wasn’t that Jack was spineless, not really—he just loved seeing her happy, loved the way she squeezed his bicep and rocked up onto her tiptoes to kiss the space between his ear and jawbone when _he_ was the one who made her happy. It was addicting.

So he called the bar ‘The Crown and Clover,’ upon Georgia’s suggestion. He let her paint the walls and name the specialty drinks. When she brought her friends, he let her control the music. When the bar started getting popular among the collegiate crowd and Jack couldn’t run it on his own, he hired the people she recommended. His project had become her project, too.

When Georgia graduated, she was the one who thought that they should start living together, and because Jack loved her, he was more than happy to take that step. After the bar closed for the night, they would sit together at the table closest to the windows—because it was Georgia’s favorite place—and search real estate websites on their respective laptops. Under the table, they played footsie, taking breaks every now and then to just lean over their screens and kiss.

It became their first real fight, and the first time that Jack had gotten his way. Georgia wanted an apartment, something small and close to the production studio that had hired her onto their CGI team, but also something that wasn’t wildly permanent, just in case. Jack was ready to settle down, wanted a house with a lawn that would need mowing and more than one bedroom.

“We don’t need the extra space,” Georgia had argued. “It’s just more to clean.”

“But we might,” Jack had replied with a squeeze of Georgia’s hand, “one day.”

“For what? Separate bedrooms when we piss each other off?”

“Well, I don’t think you’ll want our kids sleeping in our bed.”

“Kids. Gross.” She’d rolled her eyes then and he had brushed her off with a laugh, encouraging her to give it a chance and at least go to the open house.

“Besides,” he’d told her, “it’s only one extra bedroom.”

.

For a long time, that extra room had just been crammed full of boxes that Jack and Georgia were too busy to unpack. The bar had become one of the top-rated in the city, keeping Jack away from home most nights and sometimes into the early morning. Meanwhile Georgia’s career had flourished, her work recognized and praised by her superiors. They both took a Friday night off to see the newest movie from her production company, and as Georgia was hopping with excitement at seeing her name in the credits, Jack had dropped to his knee and proposed. As with anything, Georgia planned the wedding with frenzied devotion and efficiency. They were married just five months later.

Jack waited a year and a half before he started dropping hints. He would offer to babysit the neighbors’ children, teasing Georgia that it was practice for the two of them. Around Christmastime, he pointed out the cool new toys that were hitting the shelves and decided which ones he would buy for his future children.

“They have so much cool stuff for kids now,” he said, flipping through a Target magazine. “It would be nice to have someone to buy toys for. It would really feel like Christmas.”

“You can buy me toys,” Georgia suggested from across the room, sprawled out on the couch and watching a sappy holiday movie on Hallmark. “I’m always partial to the plastic lightsabers and Nerf guns. Plus, I won’t have a tantrum if they break.”

“You might. Remember the robo-dinosaur incident?” Georgia stuck out her tongue at him.

“That was an extreme case. Stupid thing was a hundred dollars; it should’ve lasted longer than a week.” She glared at the ceiling until Jack came over and laid on top of her, resting his chin on her sternum and looking at her with a soft smile.

“If we had a kid, you two could throw tantrums together.”

“Or I could just throw double the tantrums. Less diapers and mushy food that way.” He let it go in favor of chuckling at her and leaning up to kiss her nose. They could discuss it later. He was certain that she would come around to the idea, once she settled into her career and maybe got a little bit older. It had, after all, only been about two years since she graduated. They were young, they had time. He could wait a little longer.

When two more years passed, though, Jack started to feel desperate. The bar had further expanded and developed into a pub-style restaurant—kids started to come in with their parents for dinner. Jack watched the domesticity of the families from behind the bar counter, and he was jealous. He wanted to play tic-tac-toe with his son on the coloring pages that came with the kids’ menu. He wanted to clean spaghetti sauce out of his daughter’s hair when she leaned too far over her plate. He wanted to have a _family._

Every time he brought it up to Georgia, she had diverted the conversation. At first it was playful, the way she used her wittiness to steer them back into safer topics. Sometimes he brought it up just to see how she would redirect him. More recently, though, his mentions of the K-word were brushed off with less and less vehemence. Jack pressed his advantage. He wooed Georgia with flowers, surprising her with lemon cakes on grocery day and massaging her shoulders while she animated her latest project. They had sex on the couch after dinner, then in the shower, and then in the bed before they went to sleep.

.

Jack woke up to Georgia vomiting in the bathroom one morning, and he couldn’t suppress his grin as he knocked on the door and poked his head in, asking if she was alright. She threw her slipper at him, demanding he bring her Advil and Gatorade— “the purple kind, Jack, not that nasty yellow kind you drink.” He went to the store immediately, picking up the items she requested along with a few other things. When he got home, he left the bag on the bathroom door handle, knocking again to let her know it was there. Then he settled on the couch in the living room and closed his eyes, anticipation sparking daydreams of ultrasounds and baby showers.

“I asked for purple Gatorade.” It had been fifteen minutes. Jack turned to face Georgia, fighting down his nerves. The moment they made eye contact, a pink box struck him square in the chest. “>em>Only purple Gatorade! What the hell is that?!” She was pale, still nauseated-looking, but a flush of anger rose high on her cheeks. “Jack, what the hell?”

“I thought…” He clutched onto the box, the unused First Response test rattling inside its package. “You were sick, and it was morning, so I… I just thought…”

“What, that your sperm would somehow be the point-one percent that gets past my birth control? It hasn’t failed me in years, it sure as hell is not going to start failing me now!”

“Gee, please, just try the test, you never know—”

“I know,” she hissed, pointing a finger at him even as she swayed on her feet, “that that thing had better disappear. ASAP.” Her stomach convulsed, sending her scrambling back to the bathroom to throw up again. Jack winced when she slammed the door behind her, staring long and hard at the box before getting up and disposing of it in the kitchen trashcan.

He waited a half-hour before he knocked softly on the bathroom door and turned the handle. It was locked. She had never locked the door on him. He had really, royally, messed up.

“Gee, let me in. Please.” There was no movement for a moment, then a flush and the click of the lock turning. Georgia kept her forehead pressed to the cool porcelain of the toilet seat as Jack sat with his back against the cabinet under the sink. “Did you finish your Gatorade?” She reached to her left, handing him the empty bottle. “Okay. I’ll throw it away with the bag and… everything else.”

“It’s just a virus,” she mumbled, turning her head to look at him with one eye. “I’m not going to get pregnant, Jack.”

“Okay.” That was their routine, after all. Georgia spoke, and Jack complied.

.

He didn’t raise the issue in the following month. He worked, came home, made dinner, watched some TV, and went to bed. Georgia stayed up later than he did, hunched over the desktop computer in the corner of the living room with her headphones in. She stayed asleep while he got dressed in the mornings, too. Sometimes he was certain that she was faking it, just so she wouldn’t have to talk to him.

One night he came home to a spotlessly clean house, and his stomach dropped to the floor. He just knew that Georgia had left him, had moved all of her things to a hotel or something to get away from him, probably thinking that he didn’t love her anymore because she wouldn’t have his baby—but no, she was sitting at the kitchen table with Japanese take-out, motioning for him to join her.

They didn’t talk much while they enjoyed their noodles and hibachi chicken, which only wound Jack’s nerves tighter. Was she creating a false sense of security before she divorced him? Lulling him to complacency so she could say she didn’t want to be with him? Filling his belly before she broke his heart?

“Jack, we need to—”

“I love you, Gee. I’m so fucking sorry about buying that test, I’ll never do it again, I swear, just don’t tell me you’re going to leave me for it.” The words left him in a rush, leaving Georgia blinking in surprise. Part of a noodle stuck out of the corner of her mouth. It would have been funny if Jack wasn’t struggling to swallow down tears.

Georgia started laughing.

“I’m not leaving you! God, is that why you’ve been so twitchy this whole time? Jee-zus! Your imagination is something else.” She reached into the bag beside her, still snickering as she pulled out a manila envelope and handed it to him.

“So… these aren’t divorce papers?” He eyed the envelope warily, even when Georgia flicked a bit of rice at his face.

“Never were, never will be,” she replied. He broke the seal and pulled out a stack of printed pages, his eyes scanning over them quickly before going comically wide.

“Is—”

“You ask so many questions,” Georgia teased him. “It’s exhausting. Yes, Jack, it’s exactly what you think it is.”

“We’re going to be foster parents?”

“I don’t want to have kids, myself. But I know that you do.” She reached across the table and pulled out a piece of paper from the bottom of the pile. Scrawled across the top in pink pen were the words ‘The Rees Treaty.’ Georgia read some of the terms aloud. “If we get a baby, you’re handling the diapers and spit-up. I get to decorate the spare bedroom. I’ll handle the kid while you’re at work, but I get to do my work when you get home. Also, you’re in charge of the middle-of-the-night wake-ups. I need my beauty sleep.”

“I’ll do all the dirty work until the day they turn eighteen, if that’s what it takes,” Jack said, beaming at her. Georgia frowned just a little, pointing back at the treaty.

“Last thing on the list,” she said, and Jack followed her instructions. >em>Nothing permanent. “It’s fostering, Jack, not adopting. I don’t want to be a mother for the rest of my life.” He wanted to argue, but if she was compromising, he would have to compromise, too. This was more fatherhood than he could have expected an hour ago, and he would take it gratefully.

.

He should have argued. He knew that now, looking back on that moment with the taint of bitterness and regret when at the time he had been nothing but elated. Then, he’d thought it would be enough to be a father for any amount of time. Hell, maybe it would have even been better: he could have a hand in raising lots of kids instead of just one or two. And maybe Georgia would get attached to one of the kids they fostered, and she’d amend her policy on The Rees Treaty. He had had so much hope. He should have argued.

.

They got a baby for their first foster child. It would be easier, the agency decided, for them to raise a child with no memories of its original parents. There were fewer behavioral issues, less chance that the kid would rebel or run away and try to find its real family. Georgia had wrinkled her nose at the gurgling bundle. Jack had fallen in love.

Her name was Sadie, and she looked so similar to him that they could have been biologically related. She already had a solid head of hair—black, like his, and so soft that he rubbed it constantly. Some days her eyes looked grey, and other times they turned more blue. Jack made a game of waking up and guessing which it would be each day.

It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, but she was also well-behaved. She only really cried when she had gas, and Jack could remedy that easily. Sometimes she woke up during the night, but there was a mobile over her crib that usually lulled her right back to sleep with no fuss. She laughed when the women in the park made faces at her, and never tried to pull their hair or earrings. Even Georgia, after the first two months of living with Sadie, admitted that she was a good baby. Jack had felt a little thrill of triumph, just knowing that Georgia would want to change her rule and adopt the little girl who now felt like his daughter.

Eight months rolled by. Sadie started teething, gnawing on refrigerated rubber toys or Jack’s fingers, depending on the mood she was in. She hadn’t quite managed to stand up alone yet, but she could hold herself up by leaning on the couch. Jack loved her. Georgia liked her. Another family adopted her, right before Father’s Day.

.

Guilt needled at Jack’s stomach every time he walked in the door, as it had for the past three months. He had known what to expect when they registered to foster. It wasn’t permanent. They were caring for a child that would someday become someone else’s. He knew that there was always the chance that one day, Sadie would be gone. He’d just assumed that, with so many other kids in the foster care system, the odds that _their_ kid would be chosen were pretty slim. It wasn’t Georgia’s fault. He shouldn’t treat her as if it were.

But… it _was_ her fault, in a way. If she had just changed her rule on that goddamned treaty, Sadie could still be here. She could be learning to walk, toddling around the house, bare feet slapping along on laminate wood. The extra bedroom, painted bright yellow and decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, would still have an owner. Sippy cups could be in the kitchen cabinets, mixed in with Jack’s coffee mugs and Georgia’s glass water bottles.

The cups had gone when Sadie had, boxed up alongside pacifiers and animal-print onesies. She might be using one of them right now, sucking down chocolate milk with her eyes glued on her new father as he chattered to her about the cartoon they were watching. Or maybe her family had thrown them all out and started over, with no remnants of the couple that had once had her. The thought made Jack queasy.

The smell of burning bread made him even queasier. He walked into the kitchen, watching disinterestedly as Georgia slathered peanut butter and marshmallow fluff onto four pieces of toast. When she smashed them together into two sandwiches, pieces of dry crust fell to the floor. She surreptitiously used a sock-covered foot to sweep the flakes into the no-man’s-land beneath the stove. Jack’s stomach twisted—it was the same motion she’d used to dispose of Cheerios that Sadie tossed off her high chair. If he vacuumed that little black hole, Jack figured he would probably find some of the cereal pieces still there. He never vacuumed there.

“Good timing, Mister Rees,” Georgia said with a smile, kissing Jack’s cheek as she passed by him on her way to the living room. “I made dinner.”

“You burned them.”

“They’re extra-crispy.” She flopped onto the couch, setting the plate of sandwiches on the coffee table. “Come sit. I’ve got an advance copy of the new movie—the one about the scientists that gene-spliced to make altered humans, remember? You’ll have to watch for the guy with the spider eyes—he was my favorite to work on.” Jack sat down beside her, eyes wandering aimlessly as the DVD loaded to the title screen.

“Where’s your desktop?” The corner of the living room looked barren without Georgia’s pre-animation sketches taped to the walls around her desk setup. At his side, Georgia tensed—barely, just a slight shift in the air that Jack wouldn’t have detected had he not been married to her for almost five years now.

“I moved it today,” she said slowly, “to the spare bedroom.” Jack ground his teeth so noisily that he almost missed her explanation. “The company wants to make an entirely CGI movie. Like, _entirely._ And they want me to spearhead the CGI team. It’s a good thing, Jacky, it’s a promotion. I just need more room to spread out my thoughts. I figured you wouldn’t want bits of my brain all over the living room walls.”

“I don’t really want them in the kids’ room, either,” he snapped. She was silent for a minute, and a heady mix of victory and regret swirled in Jack’s chest. He wrestled with the desire to apologize as the opening credits to the movie rolled onscreen. Just as he was ready to say the words, Georgia muttered into her sandwich.

“It’s not really a kids’ room if there’s no kid in it,” she said. “It’s just wasted space.” Jack slammed his fist into the coffee table, rattling the plate and making Georgia jump.

“There _could_ have been a kid in it.” He stalked to the bedroom and slammed the door behind him. Then he punched it, just for good measure.

.

They didn’t speak at all for the next four days. Neither of them would admit defeat and take the couch, so they slept side by side, an icy animosity between them. Jack stayed at The Crown and Clover for as long as he possibly could even though he didn’t really work there anymore. He wrote out paychecks and watched Netflix in the back office, occasionally coming out to speak to the guests or serve a few drinks. Usually he made the grocery store runs for the kitchen staff, taking hours to pick up a handful of supplies. There was something cathartic about the squeaky cart wheels as he rolled them up and down every aisle except the one he couldn’t bear to see.  
When he got home that afternoon, Georgia was gone. There was a note on the counter, explaining that the production company would be revealing their new film trailer at a comic-con the coming weekend and they wanted to speak to her about possibly serving on the Q and A panel. She would be home around eight and she’d bring home some pizza. She loved him.

Jack kicked off his shoes, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and sunk into the couch. Georgia had left the TV on, as always, playing some ridiculous cartoon show. He flipped through the channels mindlessly until the phone rang.

“Hello?” He asked, cradling the cordless between his ear and shoulder as he sipped his beer and picked the remote back up.

“Hi, is this Mr. Rees?”

“Yeah.”

“Hi, Mr. Rees, this is Caroline from the agency.” He recognized her voice, too saccharine to be pleasant. “I just wanted to call and let you know that your request has been processed and applied.”

“Request? What request?”

“The request to postpone your fostering eligibility…? Mrs. Rees submitted it a couple weeks ago and said that you both were busy with your careers. It isn’t permanent, of course, Mr. Rees, you can revoke the request at any time and we would be happy to find you a foster child at the earliest possible—”

“No, she never does anything permanently, does she?” He let out a bitter laugh, gripping his drink so hard that the can buckled and splashed amber liquid out onto the floor. Jack didn’t clean it, just hung up the cordless phone and threw it at the wall. He didn’t clean that, either.

There was an empty space at the bottom of Georgia’s note, written on that goddamned panda paper. Jack seized the pen she’d left on top of the notepad, scribbling his own words beneath her own and keeping them simple: _Agency called._

He stuffed his feet back into his shoes and made for the door. On his way, he saw the final chunk of her most recent lemon cake sitting on the kitchen table. She lived for those stupid fucking cakes, always wanted them, always had Jack buy them for her—and he always did, because that was their routine: Georgia spoke, and Jack complied.

He dumped the entire cake into the garbage, leaving the crumb-sticky plate right beside his note, just so she’d know that he’d done it.


End file.
